“Moses answered the people, ‘Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.'” – Exodus 14:13-14 (NIV)
They were trapped by every visible measurement.
The Red Sea stretched in front of them, uncrossable by any means available to a group of recently freed slaves who had no boats and no time to build any. Behind them, Pharaoh’s army was closing the distance. On either side, the terrain offered no escape. The Israelites had been led to a place where every exit was blocked, and the question hanging over the entire situation was the same question that hangs over every impossible circumstance: did God bring us here to abandon us?
Moses’s instruction in that moment is one of the most counter-intuitive commands in the entire Old Testament: stand firm, and be still. Not charge the sea. Not fight the army. Not scatter into the desert. Stand firm and be still and watch. This is the instruction God gives to people whose situation has been designed, whether by enemy or by circumstance, to produce maximum panic. Stillness, in the face of advancing armies and uncrossable waters, is the specific form of faith the Red Sea moment requires.
What God did next is so familiar from childhood retellings that we sometimes lose the actual scale of it. He parted a sea. Not a shallow ford. The Red Sea, with walls of water on the right and on the left, and dry ground beneath two million people who walked through it. The army that followed them into that same path was drowned by the same waters that had protected Israel. The same sea. The same path. Two completely different outcomes, determined entirely by who was crossing and whose God was involved.
Think about the Red Sea situation in your own life: the circumstance that is completely surrounded, where the army is behind you and the sea is in front of you and there is genuinely no visible exit. The financial situation where the numbers do not add up and the deadline is imminent and every door has been tried. The medical diagnosis that has no good options. The relationship that appears irrecoverable. The legal situation that seems designed to go against you. These are Red Sea moments, and the instruction Moses gave Israel is the same instruction that applies to yours: stand firm, be still, and watch.
The faithfulness God demonstrated at the Red Sea was not a one-off performance for an unusually deserving audience. It was a declaration of character. The God who made a path through the sea for people who had no other option is the same God who can make a path through whatever is currently standing between you and the other side. Stand firm today. The sea is about to move.
Father, I am standing at the edge of my Red Sea. The army is behind me and the water is in front of me and I do not know how to get to the other side. I choose today to stand firm and be still and watch, because you told Moses that was enough. Fight for me the way you fought for Israel. Make a path where there is no path. I will walk through it. In Jesus’ name, amen.
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